The present invention relates to improvements in devices for loading and securely retaining small boats atop vehicles, and particularly to a boat loader adapted for loading a boat from a position on the ground alongside a vehicle.
Small boats have long been carried on top of cars and vans by vacationers. While such boats, if they are small enough, can be manually lifted into place atop a car or van, lifting a boat is difficult and inconvenient, if not dangerous. Particularly for the largest of the boats within the size range which can be carried on top of a vehicle, it is very difficult to manually lift a boat to the top of a vehicle. Loaders provided in the past to relieve people of the physical work of loading a boat atop a vehicle lift the boat up over the rear end of a vehicle such as a van, to an inverted position atop the van. Such boat loaders utilize ropes to lift a boat and invert it end over end. This operation, however, can be somewhat dangerous, particularly in windy weather.
While portable cranes are installed on some trucks to enable boats to be loaded, such cranes are expensive and heavy. Private automobiles and vans are limited in their load-carrying capacity. A light yet strong, relatively inexpensive, loader is needed, then, to lift and support a boat without overloading a private motor vehicle.
An associated problem which has become more pronounced with the recent increase in use of camping trailers is that carrying a boat atop a towing vehicle requires that the trailer be unhitched to permit use of a boat loader of the type described above. Particularly when the hitch is of the type which utilizes levers to control weight distribution between the trailer and the towing vehicle, the time required to unhitch and rehitch a trailer makes it quite inconvenient to unload or load a boat over the rear end of the towing vehicle. As a consequence, it is often impractical to unload a boat over the rear of a towing vehicle during a short stop, as to briefly test the fishing at a location discovered during one's travels.
What is desired, then, is a reasonably inexpensive boat loader which is simple and convenient to use, which is light in weight, which does not require a trailer to be unhitched from the vehicle on which the boat is to be loaded, and which provides safe and secure support for a boat when it is atop a vehicle.